


i think he can see through (everything but my heart)

by tophsgf



Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Unrequited Love, by that i mean there isn't one, red and kourtney will be best friends cause i say so, ricky kind of sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23995915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tophsgf/pseuds/tophsgf
Summary: “Do you ever get sick of pretending?” The venom from Kourtney’s tone is unlike anything Red has heard from her before, and he’s gotten his fair share of (albeit deserved) shit from Kourtney over the years.“What?” He feigns confusion, like her anger doesn’t make sense, like she doesn’t see right through him. He’s slightly tipsy, but not enough to be happy about being here, in EJ’s massive house, a party in full swing. Ricky and Nini are dancing, smiling at each other like they’re the only two people in the world.Kourtney looks about as thrilled to be here as Red feels.Clearly neither of them are following Ricky and Nini’s example.
Relationships: Big Red & Kourtney (HSM: The Series), Big Red & Ricky Bowen (HSM: The Series), Big Red/Ricky Bowen (HSM: The Series), Kourtney & Nini Salazar-Roberts, Kourtney/Nini Salazar-Roberts, Ricky Bowen/Nini Salazar-Roberts
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	i think he can see through (everything but my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on a social media au i did on my twitter (SC0RSESE), called 'back to daydreams again', because i'm obsessed with red & kourtney being platonic soulmates. tim will never give it to me, so i will simply do it myself.

/ **he sees everything black and white,**

**never let nobody see him cry,**

**i don’t let nobody see me wishing he was mine** /

“Do you ever get sick of pretending?” The venom from Kourtney’s tone is unlike anything Red has heard from her before, and he’s gotten his fair share of (albeit deserved) shit from Kourtney over the years.

“What?” He feigns confusion, like her anger doesn’t make sense, like she doesn’t see right through him. He’s slightly tipsy, but not enough to be happy about being here, in EJ’s massive house, a party in full swing. Ricky and Nini are dancing, smiling at each other like they’re the only two people in the world.

Kourtney looks about as thrilled to be here as Red feels. 

Clearly neither of them are following Ricky and Nini’s example.

“Save it.” The cold in Kourtney’s tone is… not surprising. But it still stings. She hasn’t liked him for a long time, probably because she sees through the jokes, the way he’s always been Ricky’s sidekick. She knows exactly how much of a liar he is. “I’m not Ricky, Red.” ‘ _I’m not so blinded by love that I don’t see you’_ doesn’t need to be said. He knows what she’s getting at. 

“Why does it matter?” He knows exactly why it matters. He knows exactly why they’re arguing at a party about something neither of them can change. “God, Kourt.” That’s a slip up. He and Kourtney aren’t close enough for nicknames, haven’t really ever been. “Kourtney. Look, what does it change? What would not pretending change?”

What would telling Ricky change? Their friendship, surely. The way Ricky sees him, Red would hope. That he isn’t just some malleable comic relief character. 

“You’re afraid.” Kourtney says, and Red cannot comprehend why she has chosen a stupid high school party as the perfect location to destroy his carefully crafted facade. “You’re afraid he already knows. That every time his hand brushes yours, or you dance in his bedroom,” _Red doesn’t know how she could have found out about that,_ “it’s part of a ploy to keep you hanging on. To keep letting him take you for granted.” 

“What the fuck, Kourtney? How would you even-” Then it hits him, it hits him like the time he collided with a brick wall during a series of escalating dares with Ricky. She isn’t angry at him, at least not as much as she appears to be. _She’s angry at herself_. 

“You love her.” It’s barely audible over the noise of the party, but he knows Kourtney hears him from the way she briefly looks away. “You’re just as pathetic as I am.” 

Kourtney laughs, a sad, hollow noise. “We’re a couple of idiots, because they don’t care about us like we care about them.” It’s like something has shifted, like they’re finally equals. Equals in unrequited love. When he makes no move to contradict her, she keeps talking. “Nini and I were supposed to arrive together, I didn’t even really want to come. But she said that we could hang out, talk like we used to.”

“But ‘something’,” Red makes air quotes, delighting in the way Kourtney giggles at that, “came up, right? So she said she’d see you here, that you’d still be able to catch up.”

“And when I got here, she couldn’t pull her attention away from-”

“Ricky.” Red finishes, and somehow it feels like he has a friend. He figured after Ashyln broke up with him he wasn’t gonna have another one of those for a long time.

With Ricky, everything is complicated. Including friendship.

“Maybe they don’t mean to be like that,” He starts, but Kourtney just rolls her eyes. 

“Does it matter?” All joking is gone from her tone, and she looks more sad than angry. “Because no matter what angle you look at it from, they’re happy and we’re..”

She doesn’t finish, but Red knows exactly what she means. _Miserable._

Fuck it. “Let’s go.”

“What?” For once, he thinks Kourtney actually looks impressed. Or at least not annoyed. “Go where?’

“Anywhere but here.”

And that’s how he ends up at the only 24hr Denny’s in Salt Lake City at 11:30PM on a Friday. With the person that has sworn to loathe him. 

Kourtney gets a smoothie, he gets a milkshake. They agree to split chocolate chip pancakes. 

Neither of them say anything about Ricky and Nini not noticing they left. 

What is there to say that they haven’t thought a million times before? 

“So..” Kourtney starts, as the waitress gives them their drinks. “What are we doing?”

“Getting breakfast?” He expects her to roll her eyes, to tell him to stop being stupid. But she does something much more surprising than that. _She laughs_ **.** At something he said, something even he can admit is not actually that funny. Kourtney is a surprising person. He decides at this moment that he likes her. Even if she doesn’t like him. 

“You’re an idiot,” she’s said that before, but never with the vague sort of affection she seems to hold for him now, “I mean, what are we gonna do about _them_.” She punctuates ‘them’ like it’s a spell, like if she pronounces it a certain way this will all disappear. They both know it won’t. 

Red isn’t sure what he’d do if it did. He’s spent so long in the midst of Ricky’s storm that to be thrown from it at this point would hurt him more than loving Ricky does. He’s used to the dull pain of being someone Ricky takes for granted. He can handle that. What he knows he can’t handle is Ricky leaving him behind. Because it would prove the one thing he’s feared their entire friendship: _Ricky will always choose someone else over him._

“Red?” Kourtney’s concern breaks him out of his Ricky induced stupor, and he meets her gaze. It feels like their relationship has fundamentally changed. Like they understand each other. “You good?” 

“No.” 

“Me neither.” She sighs, and then quietly adds, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For ambushing you at the party. Getting all intense.”

“Why did you decide to talk to me?” He shoots her a shaky smile, one she returns tenfold. 

“Because I’m so lonely,” Kourtney says, and Red’s impressed by her candor, it’s never a quality that has come easy to him, “and I thought, I don’t know, I thought that if I could get it through your head that your best friend doesn’t care about you, maybe I could figure it out too.” Her smile has faded. “I’m sick of my world revolving around her.” _Red knows the feeling._

“Wait.” Kourtney says, and Red watches her face change, like she’s thought of something life changing. Maybe she has, not like Red knows what that’s like. All he can seem to think about these days is Ricky.

“What?”

“You wanna do something momentously stupid?”

“Sure.” 

“That’s it? You’re not gonna ask me what it is?”

“I mean, you’re clearly about to tell me.” Kourtney laughs at that, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Can I eat the pancakes? Like, you’re not diving in.”

“Whatever.” Kourtney rolls her eyes, but there’s no real irritation in her gaze. “Date me?”

“Whhamf?” Red would like to think he’s got polite table manners, a side effect of his mother’s inability to let him be his own person, but he really can’t help himself from talking with his mouth full of pancakes. He gulps down the rest of what he’s chewing, quickly wipes the syrup off his face. “Look, Kourtney, you’re very pretty, but you’re not exactly… uh.”

“Red.” Kourtney is smiling, which is not the reaction he expected, “Not for real. For fake.” 

“Oh.”

“Dude, I’m a lesbian.”

“Oh.” Her expression has turned cautious, like she’s waiting for him to react. “You’re really brave, Kourtney.” He sounds like Miss Jenn when she tries to mediate conflicts in the theatre department, but he doesn’t mind. 

“What do you mean?” Kourtney’s smile is coming back, albeit slightly less bright. 

“I can’t even-” He pauses, trying to voice exactly what he’s thinking. “I dated someone I didn’t actually like because I couldn’t admit to myself that I was…” He sighs, resisting the urge to drop his head onto the table that he is now coming to realize is suspiciously sticky. “You know.”

“I know.” Kourtney echoes, and he can almost hear her thinking.

“So, um. If you’re a lesbian and I’m..” God, why can’t he just say it? “Why would we date? Isn’t that counterintuitive?” 

“Duh,” Kourtney says it like he should already be past this.“It was a stupid idea,” she relents, taking a long sip of her smoothie. “I just wish I mattered to her like she matters to me.”

_Red knows the feeling._


End file.
